In the End
by Jomorox
Summary: There comes a time when we must all say goodbye. Sometimes this happens much earlier than we might think. What do you do when the worst imaginable thing happens when you least expect it? What will Fitzwilliam Darcy do?


**Disclaimer: Don't own. **

**This is just something that I felt needed writing when I was going through Green Eyed Monster. This can be modern of Regency (with slightly inaccurate speech and a not very strong time style), it depends how you look at it. I've deliberately made it vague. I know that there are a few of these but I needed to try my own version. I apologise in advance for the sadness. **

Fitzwilliam Darcy felt his mouth go dry. Clutching his son to his chest he did not even have the energy to comfort him as he fussed. Even if he'd had the energy he would not have had the words.

What was the use of words? No words could change what had happened; no words would affect what would happen. Words could do no good. Everyone around him knew this.

Jane Bingley née Bennet knew this, which is why she walked into the room silently and took his son from him so that he could talk to the doctors.

He didn't want to talk to them. He wanted to shake his head and storm and kick like a three year old and yell at them. They weren't going to tell him what he wanted to hear, he could tell by the look on their faces. And, since he was going to get what he wanted he might as well act the way he wanted.

He was right, of course. Yet he felt no satisfaction, no small jolt of knowing he was right and no preparedness to the situation. He knew it was coming and yet he still didn't _know_. Still didn't know that it would feel this bad, that it would hurt this much when Dr Brandon let him know that there was nothing more that could be done.

He nodded and left the room. Just left without another word or glance. Just began walking away. Walking was the only thing that he had control over now and so he was going to use it as much as possible. He walked faster and faster, the background blurring beneath his eyes which had, for the first time, now that he was alone succumbed to tears.

His days became monotonous and routine. He greeted family and friends who had come to pay their respects. He made arrangements. He made sure his son was well cared for and looked after. He washed and shaved so that his sister didn't give him that terrible 'concerned' look.

But he still hadn't gone in that room.

Jane had urged him too; a chance to say goodbye. When she had failed she had called on her husband to ask the same but he'd had no success.

Richard and Georgiana had grouped together to try. He ignored them; angrily claiming that he didn't want to think about it.

It was Mr Bennet who had convinced him. Mr Bennet who after many others had tried and failed has simply walked into the room and simply stated, "She needs you."

The look on that man's face at facing the loss of his favourite daughter was all that it had taken to convince him to go in.

There she was. It was amazing, how even with her eyes closed, no expression on her face she still looked like Lizzie. His Lizzie. Except when he looked closer it was clear that she wasn't. Her skin was pale and wan and there was no mischievous smile on her face, no twinkle in her eye. She wasn't talking, teasing him, reading her favourite poetry, comforting their son and she wasn't laughing. It was impossible to think that he would never again get to hear her laugh.

She was so still. He hated that. Lizzie was so rarely still, always liked to be moving around, walking, even in the late stages of her pregnancy when he had urged her to take it easy and rest.

The room was so quiet. That was another thing. Since marrying her, no room that she had occupied had been quiet. It would always be filled with music and laughter and happiness. Silence was not the sound of the happy, it was the sound of the grieving and the miserable.

He wished desperately, frantically, pathetically that she would open her eyes.

That she would open her eyes and claim, "Got you, didn't I?" in that laughing infuriating manner that so often got the best of him.

But there was no way that she had faked this one. Lizzie Darcy who would do anything for a practical joke wouldn't do this.

Wouldn't have pretended to have fallen off her horse. Not when she had been so nervous about getting on one. And then that kick in the head. No one could do anything for that serious an injury. The only thing to be done was to wait to see if she would wake up.

And she hadn't.

Waiting longer would not do anything. There was nothing that could be done except make the appropriate arrangements.

It was strange, he was so determined to get them right and for it to be fitting for her but at moments he really didn't see the point.

He hated this. Hated everyone around him. As he sat in the church and stared at the flowers that they had chosen, he hated the world with such a passion that it scared him.

And the reason that he hated the world so much?

It was no longer his world. No longer a world at all. It was just a place. A place without meaning and life, empty and pointless.

There was Jane, crying over the loss of her sister and his cold, dead heart went out to her. Until he saw his best friend wrap his arm around his wife's shoulder. Then he realised that there was no reason for her to feel his sympathy. Of course it was sad for her, the loss of her sister would always affect her but it would devastate him. He would never be the same again. Jane still had her husband, still had someone to be with, to go home to, to spend time with whereas he had.....nothing.

"William," a stern voice whispered in his ear and he turned jumping at the voice that he recognized so well.

"Lizzie?" He wanted to turn around and look for her even though there was no way she would be there.

"Don't ask questions you know that answer too. You do not have 'nothing'. You have a wonderful sister who has a great husband who loves you very much. You are rich and handsome. And you have a pretty amazing son if I do say so myself."

"But I don't have you. What else matters?"

"William," she began again but her voice was softer and gentler; he could see her tilting her head to one side as she looked at him with her soft brown eyes. "It'll get easier."

"Why do people always say that?" He hated that phrase even more as each person spoke to him.

"You managed to live twenty-eight years without me. You know you're being unreasonable." She gave him a piercing look.

"I wasn't living then, you know that. I wasn't alive. I was just here."

She gave him another look and he realised that he was being melodramatic.

"You haven't given me long to be miserable."

"Has it ever occurred to you that I don't want you to be miserable?"

"Well then you shouldn't have left me!"

"Don't sulk."

"I'm not."

He was but he was trying desperately not to. He knew Lizzie deserved that. All through the remaining week as the family gathered round him, he stayed with them and was the polite, gracious host. He didn't initiate conversation but didn't shun away. It was a surviving mechanism that just got him through time.

Soon the family left to get back to their own lives and their own grieving and he was alone again.

He was standing at the top of the hill, their hill, looking out across the land. He could feel the wind whip around him and he pulled his coat closer around him. It had been a month since everything, yet to him the pain still felt as fresh as though it had happened that very morning.

Yet when he looked at his son and saw how he had grown he realised the time that had passed. He had said his first word this morning. He smiled proudly at the remembrance of it and the fact that he had been there. His son was a reminder that he wasn't alone.

"Did you hear that Lizzie? Our boy spoke today!" He called into the air knowing that she would never get to hear her son or her husband again.

"I heard."

The wind whipped around him again, whistling in his ear but not loud enough to block out the voice. The voice that he had been longer to hear for so long now. Every second of every minute of every day since she had gone that had made the month seem like a lifetime. He turned as though he would see her standing behind him.

"You still don't believe me do you?" She whispered sadly. "But it will get easier."

"How can it?" His spoke harshly, his tone rough voicing all the words that he had been unable to let slip this past month. "When every single day, you are the first thing on my mind, the second I wake up having already filled my unconscious thoughts? Or when I look at our son, our perfectly formed baby boy and wish, wish with all my heart that he were a girl so that I could have some small reminder of you no matter how minute? When I spend hours smelling your pillow despite the fact that I stupidly have already caused the smell to fade? How, exactly will it get easier?

"Time. Time heals all wounds."

"Don't lie to me!"

He saw the faint outline of her body, her hair and her eyes blowing in the wind and he could almost believe that she was raising her eyebrows in disapproval.

"William."

"I don't want to be healed. Healed means that I'll forget you and I want, no I need to remember you. I want to carry this pain with me forever as long as it means that I'm not moving on without you."

"That'll never happen."

"I was supposed to go first! That's how it was meant to happen. I'm older that you. It was all planned out. We were going to be old with children, maybe grandchildren. We would be sleeping by the fire and just.... drift off. Neither of us would know what happened."

"That's nice, it would have been a good plan," she smiled softly at him. "But it doesn't always work out that way. I didn't suffer, you know. It was all very peaceful. I was just thinking of you and Will. My two boys."

He felt his throat constrict again and he wondered briefly when his imagination had become so good as he could swear that he could see that gentle loving look in her eyes as she use the phrase she had so often; 'my two boys."

"We were thinking of you as well. We always will."

"You won't," her eyes were down cast and she seemed terribly sad at this thought. "But that's healthy."

Slowly she raised her hand, and stroked his cheek, softly. "You smiled today. Did you know that? For the first time. When Will spoke. And he saw you and smiled too. So you need to go on doing that. _I _need you to."

Her voice was getting faint and she was pulling away from him. He stepped closer to where he thought she would be, a desperate look in his eyes as he merely stepped into more air.

"Will." She spoke again but he could no longer see her, real or imaginary.

"Yes?" He called, hoping earnestly that this vision of her would return to him once more.

"Should you decide to remarry- And I'm fine with that decision by the way- could you for Will's sake, if not for mine make sure it's not Caroline Bingley?"

He smiled, knowing that in true Lizzie fashion this was her way of saying goodbye, with a joke and a laugh.

Nodding his agreement he could swear that he saw her skipping across the fields, laughing and picking flowers as she went becoming smaller and smaller. Once he blinked again, to shed the last remaining tears that clung to the corners of his eyes, he could see only the green.

He put his own hand to his cheek and felt nothing, not even the wind or his own fingers. Looking back just one last time he turned and began the journey home ready to start another day without his wife but with the prospect of hours filled with joy as he spent time with his son.

**Sorry for killing off one of the best loved characters of fiction. Please Review and let me know what you think. **

**Thanks for reading. **


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